


Kith And Kin

by LightsaberWeildingDalek



Category: Naruto
Genre: Gen, Why is there not more of this plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-01
Updated: 2017-09-01
Packaged: 2018-12-22 11:33:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11966502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LightsaberWeildingDalek/pseuds/LightsaberWeildingDalek
Summary: The Sage of Six Paths decides to go looking for his kids.





	Kith And Kin

Ōtsutsuki Hagoromo felt something change.  
A familiar presence that he had thought was lost to him flickered. No – no, that was wrong. Not one.  
Two.  
Two souls so precious, he had all but drowned in sorrow when they had first disappeared from the world.  
His sons were alive again!  
But they could neither hear nor see him. He reached out, trying to see their faces and hug them – to be able to feel their beating hearts thud in time with his, and never let them get hurt ever again.  
As he strained to reach them, Hagoromo fell downwards – descending from his home to the border of the mortal realm. But still, he could not breach that barrier: the one that kept the living from spontaneously transcending with every breath.  
The Sage of Six Paths – the closest sapient thing to a god of this world – raged and strained for his sons. Through the haze of despair of being so close, yet so far, Hagoromo’s rage released a torrent of power upon the mortal realm.  
The wind running over the plains of the Land of Earth began to scream with anguish. Whirling tornadoes spun themselves in and out of existence, up and down the great mountain ranges of the Land of Lightning. Great whales from the deep beached themselves in a frenzy onto the Kirigakure docks. The great Hashirama Forests of Konohagure pulled up their roots and started to walk. Every drop of snow in the Land of Iron and the Land of Snow, melted, then re-froze into one single sheet of crystal clear ice.  
The sudden influx of wild energy was enough to break through the boundary between the mortal realm and the heavens, and soon, Hagoromo fell. Down, down, down he went – until he stopped.  
No longer was he intangible, light, or weightless.  
He was heavy and stiff and he could feel once more.  
Hagoromo – and he was Hagoromo now, not the great and all-seeing Sage – opened one creaking eye, and flexed chained arms. As he opened one of his eyes to scan the cave in which he now inhabited, Hagoromo had a growing suspicion that he knew which body he was now possessing: the only vessel which would be pure of any conflicting chakra, open to his soul and strong enough to contain his power – the shinju.  
With a flex of chakra, he reshaped the cumbersome body into something more fitting to his tastes, and, with trembling legs, followed one of the many tunnels out of the ancient cavern.  
Unused to supporting its own weight, Hagoromo’s legs shook and stumbled from the strain. And not unlike an infant just learning to walk, Hagoromo kept to the walls of the cave. Only by the support of the cavern walls was he able to make his way forward. Slowly but surely, Hagoromo familiarized himself with his new body, and as his chakra pathways began to form, his strength began to grow.  
He didn’t know how long he groped along the sides of the cave for support, but all he knew was that it was a long endeavour. It was a slow and steady process, but the cavern was large and so, by the time he neared the end, Hagoromo no longer needed to lean on the rocky walls for support.  
He reached a dead end.  
Flexing a hand, Hagoromo eyed the wall before him. His new body wasn’t as weak as before, but he wasn’t at full strength either.  
Well… no time like the present, he supposed. It was time to see what his new body was capable of.  
Close to the border between the Land of Fire and the Land of Sound, a rumbling noise echoed through the serene forest. A boulder fell, and from behind it a man appeared.  
He was middle-aged, with laugh lines engraved around the corners of his lips. He had messy light brown hair framing his face. Some parts were braided intricately to the sides, while the rest spiked out from the back of his head untidily.  
A wondrous expression crossed his face as the life of the forest flowed around him. The uncanny purple eyes were closed once more, and the man turned towards the beacons of power that were his children. Resolve hardened Hagoromo’s face and he began to walk, speeding up as his confidence grew. Before long he was a blur, weaving around trees, and bouncing over hills.  
Hagoromo skidded to a halt, gasping for breath. His legs were aching and his lungs felt like they had been set aflame. It seemed as if, though he could still manifest a good part of his spiritual power, this vessel was greatly lacking in stamina and durability. He had had to compensate for that by reinforcing his body with chakra during that short run - and that was far too inefficient a method to run all the way to his children’s side, given his still developing chakra coils. Not to mention the attention he would draw from crashing through the landscape like a drunk bull trying to ice skate.  
Hagoromo took in his surroundings. There was a large skidmark stretching from his feet, but otherwise, it was a perfectly peaceful forest, albeit quiet. The wildlife had most likely been scared off by his rather undignified entrance.  
Speaking of undignified, Hagoromo glanced down at his unclothed body. He couldn’t embarrass Indra and Asura by wandering up to them naked!  
Hagoromo distinctly remembered the unfortunate incident in which his wrestling children had fallen into the river where he and his sweet Tennyo had been bathing. Their shrieks had frightened the birds within a mile’s radius. He smiled wistfully at those wonderful years – when their family had all been alive and well.  
By now he had been wandering through the forest, still in the direction of his sons, rather put upon by this new predicament. The sides of his lips pulled down as his brows furrowed in contemplation. So lost in his own thoughts, he almost failed to notice that someone was calling for his attention.  
There was a merchant wagon approaching from the distance and some figure waving at him with wide motions. Blinking, Hagoromo mirrored the action, before remembering to hide behind a nearby tree to preserve what was left of his dignity. It wouldn’t do to subject a stranger to see his state of undress. Only his wife ever had that privilege and he was sure she wouldn’t stand for it if he allowed himself to be seen in such a manner outside of an onsen.  
As the vehicle neared its approach, he could clearly see that the gentleman pulling the heavy contraption was sporting a concerned expression. The closer the sir did get, the slower he pulled his wagon until it came to a complete stop just before the tree Hagoromo had chosen.  
\---  
“Valorous morrow to thee, kind sir! Would thou befall to hast a spare changeth of robes?”  
Daisuke wasn’t sure what he was expecting when he’d left his house with a wagon full of goods to trade without even a bit of hired help for protection. He had been silently dreading the inevitable bandit attack or the accidental crossing of some shinobi in whatever conflict they decided they were to have for the day.  
Sure, he was aware of the dangers of travelling alone, especially with such baggage, but he wasn’t exactly expecting to come across a poor soul, victimized so thoroughly that the man was even stripped of his underwear. The poor man was so addled, he wasn’t even speaking properly!  
The man must have been a rich sort to have been stripped as bare as he was. Heavy brocade and fine silks were probably in the hands of some bandits by now. The man obviously had some sort of literary background – he didn’t think anyone used such an archaic way of speaking outside of the classics and those plays the wealthy folk liked to watch.  
Taking pity on the poor man, Daisuke fished out one of his spare robes and a few bandages to allow the pitiful stranger some sort of basic decency.  
“Here ya’ go,” Daisuke offered, voice slightly awkward. “I mean, it’s probably not what you’re used to, but at least you have something to wear.”  
To his pleasant surprise (and perhaps not so surprisingly), the naked man took the offered robe and put it on. The robe was a dark blue with a pattern of feathers. The unnamed man smiled at him brightly and suddenly said, “Thank thou for thy generosity! I am Hagoromo!”  
Daisuke shook his head and the sides of his lips quirked. “Not exactly. It might have feathers on them, but it’s not exactly made out of feathers.” And he doubted the strange man was a tennin from the heavens. “I’m Okō Daisuke, sir. Who are you?”  
The confused man gave a frown. “I’m Hagoromo, kind sir. I believeth I already did introduce myself.”  
Daisuke wondered if the man was too confused or if his parents really did name him Feather Mantle of all things. His parents must have deeply enjoyed “The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter.” Daisuke thought that if Hagoromo was the man’s real name, that it wouldn’t be far off to guess that that any sister of his must have been named Kaguya.  
Daisuke coughed. “Uh, okay then. May I ask where you’re headed?”  
Hagoromo gave him a bright smile. “I am off to see mine sons!”  
“...Sons?” The merchant blinked in slight surprise, rubbing the back of his neck. “Where are they?”  
The man raised an arm and pointed almost directly south, with the smile still plastered on his face. “I doth not wot jump whence they art, but mine beloved sons, Indra and Asura, art somewhere in yond direction!”  
Daisuke blinked, unsure how to respond. The man looked far too proud in admitting he had no clue where he was going.  
Perhaps this man had been trained by those Monks up valley, the ones who were rumored to be able “sense the life essence” of a person from the other side of the town, or something along those lines. Seemed a bit voyeuristic to him, but what did Daisuke know about the mysteries of the universe? Those monks and ninjas all had their strange magic voodoo. For all he knew, the samurai did too.  
Also, Hagoromo naming his sons Indra and Asura?  
Daisuke shook his head. His little hypothesis about that hypothetical Kaguya relative was beginning to sound more and more likely. He just hoped that if this Asura boy had a daughter, that he would not name her Shachi, if only to avoid tempting fate so that the Indra boy wouldn’t fall into some sort of incestuous relationship with his brother’s daughter. If the two boys had a rivalry as terrible as their mythological namesakes, he at least hoped that they wouldn’t follow it down that route as well.  
Either way, Daisuke tried to think of what possibly lay in the south, but all he could think of was the rest of the Land of Fire, which was a large country by itself. There was the Arai Farm about an hour’s walk that way, and a little bit further was Widow Sato’s place. After that it was mostly the Mochida family’s land, at least until Kaato village. He didn’t know what was after that, and said as much to the smiling man at his side.  
It was unlikely that two wandering youths fleeing from a bandit had been taken in by Arai Kaito. That man was notorious in the area for being very defensive of his property – to the point at which, last summer, he chased off some drunk layabouts with a butchering knife, screaming obscenities the entire time.  
And Old Mrs. Sato was so deaf and blind, when her cousin came to deliver food, he had to yell in her ear to get her attention. There was no way she would have noticed two trespassers, let alone take them in.  
With the Mochida land almost completely abandoned, that left the village as the most likely place for the children to have run or been taken to. There was no guarantee that the children had escaped, after all. For all he knew, Hagoromo’s obviously confounded state could have been in denial of his children’s untimely and unfortunate demise. Bandits were notoriously cruel, after all.  
Even if these children weren’t there, Daisuke had to at least take this Hagoromo (and he still couldn’t believe someone had actually named a child that) fellow to Kaato so he could get in contact with his family.  
If they were still alive, that is.

\---  
Hagoromo waited politely as the the cart-man muttered to himself unintelligibly, looking towards Indra and Asura’s direction. The cart-man was counting on his fingers as Hagoromo circled the cart. It was a strange design, and filled with bales of dyed cloth and some premade kimono and yukata. Hagoromo came back to where he started just as the cart-man finished his monologue.  
He looked at Hagoromo, the road next to him, and at Hagoromo again. The beckoning hand made it obvious what he wanted Hagoromo to do.  
Well, the man was travelling in the right direction, anyway, and there was no harm in keeping someone company. Thus, Hagoromo took the offer and jumped onto the road, smiling at his new friend as they began to move down the road.


End file.
